


Hello, Mary Lou

by psyduckappears



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Bi disaster Reggie, Bisexual Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Kinda, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Reggie Peters, Peterpatter, Reggie is hopeless, Ricky Nelson, Serenading, Songfic, This is pure fluff, don't even ask, i know i'm shocked too, i love them, idiots to lovers, no pain, ruke - Freeform, short and sweet, this is silly, whatever this ship is called
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29164896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psyduckappears/pseuds/psyduckappears
Summary: When they're fifteen, teenage silliness and a brief misunderstanding about a song title lead to Reggie giving Luke a new nickname. Nobody except for him knows that it's a love song, and since he's absolutely not in love with Luke anyway (hah), it's not weird. Right?Or: I have a hyperfixation on a certain Ricky Nelson song so I wrote the first completely pain-free thing I've posted in this fandom. This is... very silly. You've been warned.
Relationships: Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 179





	Hello, Mary Lou

**Author's Note:**

> if you don't know the song, have this right here: [Hello, Mary Lou](HNM5_NT01wk).
> 
> What do you want me to say? I wrote something really, really painful, and I needed to do penance. Comments and kudos are as always appreciated, but mostly, enjoy!

It starts with a misunderstanding. They’re fifteen, and the band is lazing in the studio post-practice; Bobby throwing darts at the board on the wall, Alex reading up on the loft, Luke writing in his songbook on the couch, and Reggie, next to him, strumming on the acoustic that’s always lying around and never properly tuned. He’s humming along the melody of Ricky Nelson’s version of _Hello, Mary Lou_ because it reminds him of his grandma, who introduced him to the guy when she and his parents were still talking. It’s rockabilly, not country, which he pointed out the moment he started and Luke gave him that _look_ , resulting in a begrudging permission to play it. Luke is all the way back in his one-track-mind song-writing headspace by now, but Alex eventually looks up from his book and asks what the song is called. Reggie answers, but a yawn drags through the title, and Bobby, who hasn’t been listening until then turns and gives him a funny look. 

“What did you just say about marrying Luke?” 

“Wait, what?” Luke asks, suddenly back in the present. 

Reggie splutters, torn between blushing and laughing and settles for both. It’s probably not as funny as his wheezing makes it out to be, but Reggie has been tense and overtired for days, so everything seems a little funnier than it is. Also, he’s fifteen. Everything that is stupid is funny. 

“Not – not marry Luke!” he gets out between laughs as Luke bemusedly rubs a hand over his back to calm him down. “ _Mary Lou_ _._ The song’s called, _Hello, Mary Lou_.” 

“You guys – I don’t even know,” Alex says, exasperated, and goes back to his book. Reggie, though, Reggie’s still laughing, knocking his shoulder against Luke’s and decidedly not thinking about why the frankly ridiculous notion of marrying Luke made him go so red in the face. 

“Hello, Mary Lou,” he says, with that same grin still lingering on his lips, and Luke rolls his eyes. Reggie can see the smile as he turns back to his scribbled handwriting, though. It makes him feel pretty good about himself. 

It sticks, is the thing. It’s only Reggie, of course, but after that day, for some inexplicable reason he keeps calling Luke ‘Lou’ every now and then. For some even more inexplicable reason, Luke lets him, though always with that eye-roll and half-hidden smile. Every time, it makes Reggie’s heart swell a bit. 

It takes a year before he realises it’s probably a little weird. Not that the guys know that it’s weird, but the thing is, _Hello, Mary Lou_ is a love song from the books. The chorus literally goes “Hello, Mary Lou, goodbye heart” and then proceeds to proclaim how in love the singer is with Mary Lou and how they’d “never part”. Neither Luke nor Alex and Bobby have ever heard the lyrics, though, at least not from Reggie, and when the thought first hits him, he determines to keep it that way. 

It would be a good idea to stop using the nickname now that he knows, hoping everyone would forget about the whole thing soon, but it’s hard. Reggie has always been great at picking up habits and useless at losing them. So, Mary Lou stays, and Reggie becomes very careful avoiding Ricky Nelson around his friends. 

There’s a tiny problem. The tiny problem takes the shape of sweet, goofy Luke Patterson, who seems to have evaded puberty entirely and just kept growing more and more gorgeous by the day. Every time Reggie walks in the studio now, habitually throwing out a semi-melodious _Hello, Mary Lou_ , it feels like a term of endearment the second it leaves his mouth. (Actually, none of that is the problem. The problem is that he likes the idea. He _wants_ to mean it that way and for Luke to hear it that way. He’s screwed.) It doesn’t have to be a problem, he decides because he’s an idiot and about as foresighted as a brick, as long as nobody finds out. 

Of course, it doesn’t work out like that – which leads to the now. Reggie’s on his bed, trying to figure out a math problem he has no chance of solving because he hasn’t been paying attention in a month. His parents are out, working, or avoiding each other, or both. On the ground, there’s Luke, going through his CD collection. He was never going to be of any help with his homework anyway, so Reggie lets him. At least he’s quiet that way. 

Finally, Luke settles on something and puts it into the CD player. Reggie is so busy rereading the instructions for the sixth time, he doesn’t realise what song is on until its halfway finished. When it hits him, he scrambles to get up so quickly he falls off the bed. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Luke asks, laughing lightly as he crawls over to sit beside him. When Reggie sits up, his hand hurts a little, but he shakes it out and nods. 

“Uh, yeah.” 

“Cool. So why did you just throw yourself off your bed like something bit you?” 

“I – the song.” 

“What about it?” Luke asks, eyebrow raised. Reggie opens and closes his mouth once, twice, then stops when he realises he must look like a fish. 

“It’s a love song.” 

“I know.” 

“You know.” 

Luke laughs again and nudges him with the tip of his socked foot. “Yeah, I know. D’you think I’d let you go around giving me weirdly specific nicknames without at least looking up the song at some point?” 

Reggie releases a breath he hadn’t been holding. (He knows because there isn’t any air in his lungs to let out, so it comes out short and weak and strangled.) “So you don’t… mind?” 

“Nope. It’s actually kind of cute,” Luke says, messing up his hair, and well. Has Reggie mentioned how absolutely fucking ruined he is? All he can do is blush and put on a laugh. 

“Shut up.” 

It takes a week before Reggie recovers enough to have a normal conversation with Luke without feeling his ears burning up, but he gets there. When things are back to normal, life goes into its regular blur of school, practice, and late nights filled with his parents’ rising voices, and he kind of… forgets about the whole incident. Until one night, when he sneaks out through his window and flees to the studio, where Luke is sitting with the acoustic in his lap. Reggie freezes in the doorway, still unnoticed, when he realises. Luke’s playing _the song_. Yes, that song. This cute-ass little Ricky Nelson love song that reminds Reggie of his grandma, and of not-so-secretly stealing the unbaked crumbles from her pies, and of sunny afternoons spent in that tiny living room, dancing to this very melody. Ricky Nelson was cute on the picture that was on the record she’d had back then, but Luke in that moment is every 1960’s teen girl’s heartthrob dream. Well, he’s in sweatpants and one of his cut shirts, and his hair is growing out messily, but he’s sure the 60’s girls would have forgiven him at the sight of the guitar under his fingers, and of the little frown on his face, and the sound of his voice going all low and pretty. Reggie sure does. Reggie thinks swooning would probably be a good way to describe what he’s doing right now. He’s been too in love with Luke for too long. 

“Oh,” Luke says, quitting mid-song when he notices Reggie. He gives him a smile and lets his strumming hand hang over the edge of the guitar. “Hey, Reg.” 

“Hi,” he squeaks, like he’s been caught in the act… doing something. Staring. Daydreaming. Swooning. He understands now why the idea of marrying Luke made him so flustered all that time ago. Though he barely trusts his feet, he goes over and sits next to Luke on the couch. “You’re playing the song.” 

“Perceptive as ever.” Luke grins. “It’s been stuck in my head ever since we listened to it at your place, so I figured… Wanna hear the whole thing?” 

Reggie isn’t sure he’s going to survive that, but he’s less sure he’ll be able to live without it, so he nods jerkily, face undoubtably already reddening. When Luke hits the first chord, he knows for sure he’ll never stop being in love with him. The song starts with the chorus, and it goes like this: 

_Hello, Mary Lou,_

_Goodbye, Heart._

_Sweet Mary Lou, I’m so in love with you._

_I knew, Mary Lou,_

_We’d never part,_

_So hello, Mary Lou,_

_Goodbye, Heart._

Yeah, Reggie said goodbye to his heart a long, long time ago. Luke doesn’t even know he’s holding it in his fingers. The song is only two and a half minutes long, but any amount of time with Luke singing is enough to have Reggie forget himself, so he finds himself perfectly relaxed by the time Luke finishes. 

“You should really reconsider about the country thing,” Reggie grins. Luke scrunches up his nose in faux disgust. 

“I thought you said this was rockabilly.” 

“It is, but rockabilly is like fifty per cent country. The ‘billy’ is from ‘hillbilly’.” Leave it to Luke not to know his music history. Then again, that’s what he was betting on when he told Luke the genre of the song. 

“You absolutely cheated me into this,” Luke says, shoving him lightly. Reggie’s shoulder tingles where his hand presses against it. 

“It’s obviously part of my evil masterplan to slowly ease you into country.” He returns the shove, but Luke barely budges. Stupid muscles. “Because I’m right and you secretly love it.” 

“ _Only_ this one song,” Luke says. He’s pouting a little, which Reggie attributes to the fact that his super-cool rock star persona can’t be reconciled with the possibility of liking something lame like country music. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” Luke sticks his tongue out at him, and Reggie grins a little wider. “Can you play it again?” he asks. He’s ready this time, he’s seen it. Surely, he can watch his friend play a song without melting in the spot. Luke laughs, but he’s already positioning his fingers. 

It’s alright until Luke is confident with his chords and gets to the second verse, and he looks up, right up at Reggie with that smirk that makes his head spin. He swallows, dryly. 

_I saw your lips_ _,_ _I heard your voice_ _._

_B_ _elieve me, I just had no choice_ _;_

_Wild horses couldn't make me stay away._

_I thought about a moonlit night,_

_M_ _y arms around you good and tight,_

_T_ _hat's all I had to see, for me to s_ _t_ _ay._

So, maybe Luke knows what he’s doing to him. All he can do is stare, so that’s what he does all the while as Luke finishes up the song for a second time and puts down the guitar before he looks up at him again. Still that grin. 

“You okay?” 

“Uh-huh,” Reggie all but squeaks, nodding his head frantically as if to convince himself. “Yeah, I’m great.” 

“Reg?” 

“Yeah?” 

“How many times am I going to have to serenade you until you get the hint?” 

If Reggie’s mind wasn’t already blanking, it would be, now. He’s staring again, and he’s doing the fish thing again, and he just really wants his brain to keep up for once in his life. “Uh – what?” he manages, and Luke sighs and puts the guitar down. 

Then, he takes Reggie’s hands. Oh. 

“Oh.” 

“If this is weird and I misread, like, _everything_ , please don’t freak out, but, man. I’ve been in love with you for _two years_ and it’s kind of killing me that I can’t complain about it to my best friend.” 

Luke’s hands are warm, he notices. They always are, as is the rest of him, but it’s particularly nice on a cool night like this one. It takes another few moments for him to process what he’s being told, and as he does, the flutter in his stomach grows and grows. 

“You’re – you. I.” It’s the most eloquent sentence he can produce right now, so sue him. Luke tugs at his fingers. 

“Can I have any indication if I’ve just made this super awkward?” 

“No, no,” Reggie says, which. Well, at least this time he’s making sense. He doesn’t want Luke to think – He shakes his head a little as if to clear it, and it’s surprisingly effective. “I just… I’m processing. Sorry. You were saying – serenading me, right. I guess if you hadn’t said anything it would have taken another five to seven times.” 

Luke lets out a startled laugh, but when Reggie meets his eyes, they’re still a little insecure. He gives him a smile, hoping to fix it, and squeezes his fingers a little. 

“I wouldn’t mind if you played me that song five to seven more times, either way,” he says with a shy grin and watches as something bright turns back up in Luke’s eyes. “Ricky Nelson’s got nothing on you.” 

With that, Luke launches forward and tackles him in a hug that has him on his back on the sofa in an instant. Luke is pressed flush against him, and he doesn’t think he minds all that much. “You’re such a dork,” Luke mumbles in the crook of his neck. Reggie laughs. 

“You’re the one that just serenaded me with a Ricky Nelson song.” 

“You’re the one that named me after that Ricky Nelson song,” Luke counters. 

“For what it’s worth, sweet Mary Lou,” Reggie grins, wrapping his arms tightly around Luke’s back. “I’m _so_ in love with you.” 


End file.
